hen the parasite sets in, small white bubbles rise up. They are warm, transparent and may appear anywhere. Cases have been documented in Boston, Cambridge and New York and the number is increasing. The appearance is not on the skin but on the sidewalks. New York artist Michael Rakowitz is the engineer of paraSITE, a temporary living space for the homeless. We may see homeless citizens every day, but now we see them unexpectedly, living inside what looks like a space-age tent. paraSITE uses the warm air that escapes buildings to inflate and to provide night-time shelter. The cities and their buildings become hosts for the homeless, providing a short term solution for an ongoing condition. Rakowitz presents paraSITE in a new co-edition by onestar press • Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art. Circumventions includes preliminary drawings, photos and an interview by Carolyn Christoph-Bakergiev, chief curator at Castello di Rivoli. The new book also reviews Rakowitz’ other projects including one in which he successfully relocated the aroma of a Chinese bakery up into a gallery. This November, Rakowitz will receive the 2003 Dena Art Award. A paraSITE is also planned for Paris.
R.W. (Paris)
eady to Change is Polonca Lovsin’s (b. 1970) contribution to the 25th International Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana. Presented on a platform conceived by Allen Ruppersberg (along with four other titles by Slovenian artists), the book gets her art across as assuredly as any installation could have. Lovsin is interested in how people apply savoir-faire, technology or special know-how to their lives. In this way, the book catalogues a suite of discoveries arranged in categories (building/ growing / adapting / changing / exchanging / collaborating) of which the simple list would outrun the remaining inch of this column. Take an inventor’s fair, a cooking-at-home and a home-improvement television series, a do-it-yourself store and a survival manual, then elevate all of it to a life-style!
n March 2003, Rainer Ganahl invited people to graffiti a wall with their opinions on US politics, transforming a booth in New York’s Armory Art Fair into a pictorial poll. Visitors were asked to respond to the phrase, “Please write your opinions on US politics…” The resulting dicta show a dawning group awareness of the immanent attack on Iraq. The comments would, at first, seem to be most comprehensible in the context of March 2003’s political circumstances; but as the booth’s walls filled up with opinions, a more reactional rather than reactionary discourse charged the stall into an active space, drawing a direct contrast with the passive viewing spaces traditionally associated with an art fair’s booths. Ganahl’s platform for this expression suggests an experiment rather than a document embodying an interesting non-reciprocal relationship between artist and audience. Maria Fusco (London)
